Time for Spring Cleaning… Your Mind!

The leaves are on the trees and the flowers are blooming.  Spring is here and for many people, its time to shake out the cobwebs of winter and do some spring cleaning.  Opening up the windows and washing things down is a great way to get your house in order after being closed up tight for the winter.  But your brain needs to do the same thing!

How many times have you passed through a room in your house and said to yourself “Man, I need to do something about that” – whatever “that” is. But you don’t do anything about it – just keep saying that to yourself.  Now is the time to get it out of your head and into your system.  It will free your mind to enjoy the flowers and the birds or whatever you enjoy most about this time of year.

So do your mind a favor and do a Clean Sweep.  Go through each room of your house and write down anything that needs your attention. Don’t forget the outside too.  Fix this, throw away that, change out the other thing… Get it all down and out of your head. Put it in your system and determine whether what you’ve wrote is the next action you need in order to complete that item. For example, I have a shed that I need to complete the electrical wiring in.  Is that it – just complete the wiring?  No.  I need to determine what materials I need and whether I have them on-hand.  If not, I have an errand to complete to purchase those materials.  THEN I can complete the wiring and consider the job done. Always think it through and boil it down to next actions – you’ll do a lot less of what I call “pass-overs” where you look at something and say “nope, can’t do that now” if you’ve distilled it down to Next Actions.  And don’t forget your categories too!

Happy Spring.